This House of Sorrow, This House of Solitude
by ariel2me
Summary: Written for Game of Ships Ice and Fire Challenge on Tumblr. Prompt: Illness (Orys Baratheon/Argella Durrendon) Orys comes back to Storm's End after a long absence serving as Hand of the King in King's Landing.


"Welcome home, my lord."

_Home_. Was this home, this castle and this land that seemed to delight in openly defying him? The sky was clear and the sun was shining brightly when he left King's Landing, but it had started raining heavily once they crossed into the stormlands. His men had counseled Orys to ride in the baggage cart to stay out of the rain, but he had refused and stayed on his horse. Even the mere suggestion was humiliating. He was Orys Baratheon, Aegon the Conqueror's ablest and most trusted battle commander, victor of countless battles, slayer of many men. How would it look to the people he was trying to rule if he could not ride openly to his own castle?

His head was pounding mercilessly. The journey had taken longer than it should, courtesy of the rain and the wind, not to mention the cold.

"Will you be staying long this time, my lord?"

_I will stay as long as I wish. This is my castle and my land._

The castellan was a man Orys had brought with him from Dragonstone, but this man was looking more and more like a stormlander with the passing of each year. The castellan had married one of Argella's ladies-in-waiting, with Orys' blessing, and his wife had given him three sons, all named after her stormlander ancestors.

"Where are my wife and son?" Orys asked.

"Here I am, my lord husband."

He had forgotten how melodious her voice was. She was wearing a new dress, one he had never seen before. The color suited her complexion and brought out the hazel tint in her green eyes. "Go," he heard her whispering to their son. Her long fingers gently caressed the boy's face, encouraging him forward. "Your father is home," Argella whispered to their son.

The boy hesitated, staring at his mother uncertainly. He had grown since the last time Orys had seen him, almost a year ago. He had his father's black hair and blue eyes, but everything else he had inherited from his mother, from the deep dimples in his cheeks to his small, pointed nose.

"Father. I am glad to welcome you home," the boy said shyly, bowing slightly. Those were not the words of a five-year-old. Argella must have taught him what to say.

"I am glad to be home, Steffon," Orys said gravely. He longed to put his arms around the boy, but little Steffon was looking at him as if he was a stranger to be feared.

Orys would have liked to name the boy Aegon, in honor of his king, his truest and perhaps only friend. Argella would have liked to name the boy Argilac in honor of her father, Orys suspected. The only way to keep peace was for neither of them to get their wish. Steffon, their firstborn would be called, neither a Durrendon name nor a Baratheon one.

And certainly not a Targaryen name.

The Conqueror's bastard brother, the whispers followed Orys everywhere he went in the Seven Kingdoms, loudest still in the stormlands. They only serve to fortify his determination to put House Baratheon on the map; a strong, powerful House that could not be ignored or overlooked. He had adopted the Durrendon's words and sigil as a gesture of conciliation towards the people of the stormlands he had subdued, but the Durrendon words – _Ours is the Fury_ – truly resonated strongly with Orys.

The stag on the sigil was another matter altogether. It seemed inane beyond belief to Orys, for what were stags compared to the mighty dragons? But he did what he had to do, and the stag remained on the sigil.

Marrying Argella was another thing he had to do - to solidify Aegon's hold on the stormlands, and Orys' own rule as Lord of Storm's End. Yes, he married her because he had to, he kept telling himself. It seemed much safer to believe that, for how could he ever hope to maintain the upper hand in the marriage otherwise?

Rhaenys had suspected something different. Rhaenys who was prowling the sky atop her dragon Meraxes when the garrison at Storm's End had presented the chained, naked Argella to Orys, as if she was a sacrificial offering they were giving him.

"I saw the way you looked at her. Do not confuse pity with love, brother," Rhaenys had warned Orys.

_But I am not your brother, Rhaenys. Not in the eyes of the world. _

He _did _pity Argella, when he saw her bruised body, when he ordered the chains shackling her to be removed, when he draped her naked flesh with his own cloak, when he held the goblet to her mouth while she drank the wine. But he did not love her yet, not then. That came later, when her pride and her defiance reasserted itself and she told him to slay her, as he had slayed her father. "Am I not worthy to be considered your enemy, like my father was? Am I only worthy of your pity and your mercy?"

"You _were_ my enemy, and I have defeated you. Your punishment is to spend your days as my loyal wife, while I rule the land your father used to rule."

"It should have been _my_ land to rule. I am the Storm Queen, now that my father is dead."

"Your own men did not agree to that."

He had banished the men who betrayed Argella, the ones who put her in chains and surrendered the castle to Orys without a fight. If they could turn on Argella so easily, there was no guarantee that they would not turn on Orys just as easily some day if they believed it would be to their advantage. Vows of loyalty from turncloaks were not worth very much, Orys knew.

The war ended, Aegon sat on the throne he had forged from the swords of his vanquished enemies, and he made Orys his principal advisor, his Hand of the King. Orys spent most of his time by the king's side at King's Landing, leaving the ruling of the stormlands in the hands of the castellan and Argella. Mostly Argella. Orys was consulted from time to time; Argella always made it a point to _appear_ to consult him when it came to the big matters, but in truth, she knew much more about the ancient grudges and quarrels between the lords of the stormlands than he did, and more often than not, he deferred to her suggested solution. And of course there were the smaller matters, the day-to-day business of ruling that Argella conducted on her own accord as the Lady of Storm's End whose lord husband was usually absent.

It was not exactly how Orys had envisioned his life as Lord of Storm's End. But his mind, and his time, was fully occupied with the king's business, with Aegon's concerns, with the realm's difficulties. And he could not fault the work Argella was doing; the stormlands was prospering, and not a hint of rebellion or unrest could be detected in the region. She would have made a good queen, the thought came to him from time to time, and Orys quickly banished it, for it was disloyal to Aegon for him to think that.

Aegon had been the one who told Orys to spend more time in Storm's End. "It's time the lady Argella gives you another son. You cannot secure a Baratheon dynasty with just the one boy." Aegon's sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya had given him two sons, and the Targaryen rule seemed secure for another generation at least.

_Another son_, Orys mused. Another son who would look at him as if he was a stranger, who would shy away from his touch, who would not speak to Orys except to reply to a question or to repeat something Argella had told the boy to say to his father.

Orys had a wife as well. A wife who did not shy away from his touch, not overtly at least, but whose calm demeanor and courteous civility felt like an unspoken rebuke to Orys. _Here I am, courteous to the very last to my enemy, to the man who murdered my father and stole my crown. _His pride could not stand it, just as her pride had been appalled at the kindness he had shown her at her lowest moment, when she was chained, naked, and defenseless.

Perhaps that was her revenge.

In Dragonstone, growing up with a family he had no right to call his own, whose name he was not allowed to share, despite sharing their blood, Orys had dreamt of the day he would finally have a family of his own. A wife, and a gaggle of children who shared his name, who shared his joy and his sorrow.

He let out a heavy sigh.

"Is anything the matter?" Argella asked.

Orys turned around with surprise. He had not heard her steps coming into the room. He considered her question.

_This is not the life I thought I would have_, he imagined telling her. She would say nothing in reply, would show nothing on her face, he knew, would adamantly deny him an honest reaction. But he knew that she would be scoffing, silently. _Welcome to my life_, he imagined her snickering. _This is not the life I wanted either._

He could not, in fairness, place any blame on her for feeling this way. And that, more than anything else, was what made everything seemed more hopeless than ever.

"You should rest. The journey must have been tiring," she said in a toneless voice, and walked out of the room without giving him another glance.

He slept through the afternoon meal and even through supper, waking up to the feel of a cool cloth pressing on his forehead. He opened his eyes expecting to see the maester, gently scolding him for riding in the heavy rain and bringing on a fever. "I am not a delicate child," he would scold the maester in return.

But it was not the maester's face he saw when he opened his eyes. "You slept in your wet clothes," Argella chided him, her voice not as calm and toneless as it usually was when she spoke to him. He was not in those clothes now. Someone had changed them for dry ones while he slept.

"The maester is busy with a breech birth. Twins, and the mother is small, barely fifteen. He will come to examine you when he can."

"I do not need a maester," Orys grumbled. "I am not ill," he said insistently, while his hoarse voice and his shivering body betrayed him.

She did not contradict him. But the maester would still be coming. This was her way of doing things, he knew that by now.

The desire to hurt her with his words was overwhelming, to shock her out of this pretense of complacency. "Forget the maester. If I am dead, you can rule the stormlands in peace until Steffon comes of age. A queen in everything but name," he said in a malicious tone.

The calm never left her face, her expression remained the same, untouched, unperturbed. "But you are not ill, as you keep insisting. So why would you die?" She asked, without flinching from his gaze.

He closed his eyes and wished he was back in King's Landing. Or Dragonstone. That had been his home once, regardless of how unsatisfying and stifling he had found it at the time.

"You must eat," Argella broke the silence, her hand touching his shoulder.

"I am not hungry."

"Your king would never forgive me if you starve to death at Storm's End."

"He is your king too."

What was there to say to that? So she said nothing.

"It was your choice to stay away for so long," she said suddenly, breaking the silence. "Or perhaps it was _his_ command, your king, I do not know which. Either way, it is unfair to blame me for you and your son being a stranger to each other."

"I have never blamed you for that," Orys said truthfully.

"But you _do_ blame me for something," Argella insisted.

He blamed himself. Blamed himself for voluntarily handing her the weapon she needed, with his pathetic protestations of love on their wedding night. He shuddered recalling his foolishness. There had been no contempt in her eyes greeting his declaration, only pity, and that was a fate worse than death to Orys.

"You hated me when you thought I pitied you, but you pitied me when you saw that I loved you," he said.

"It is not _me_ you love," she replied. "It was never me you wanted. You wanted a home, a place to belong, and you thought I could give you that."

What was there to say to that? So he said nothing.

"Is it so wrong, to want those things?" He asked, breaking another long silence.

"No. But it is wrong to deceive yourself," she replied. "I cannot give you a home, it's something we have to build, together." Her tone made it clear that no further argument was necessary, or even welcomed. He swallowed the soup she fed him and drank the water from the goblet she held to his mouth without protest. She stayed with him until the maester finally came, close to dawn.


End file.
